This paper indicates that CA adoption in India is mostly in the irrigated IndoGangetic Plains and typically uses agrochemicals. This study explores the adoption of CA in a rainfed area of Central India  where farms are organic and look at the factors that led to adoption. Results showed that the variables that were important were farmers’ age, household size (a proxy for labour), extension frequency, farmer’s initiative-taking ability, farming experience, and market accessibility. The majority (90%) of the adopters indicated improvements in soil health, reduction in water use, and increases in yields and quality. They also indicated (80%) that CA led to lower costs, and higher incomes. However, biomass was an issue since farmers use the residues for cattle feed. The conclude that "To scale CA and produce food sustainably in rainfed areas, it is necessary to initiate supporting policy and institutional interventions that would improve extension, biomass production, and availability within the farming system.

This is an interesting review of how Brazilian farmers moved from a tillage intensive farming system to one that used no-till, permanent soil cover, and rotations or conservation agriculture. In Brazil over 52 years, no-tillage systems (NTS) evolved allowing Brazil to move from a major importer of agricultural products to one of the largest producers and exporters globally. This paper reviews how this came about. It was spontaneous without any specific incentive program or policy. It was also because of the farming sector in Brazil who was responsible for this mobilization and sought alternatives that led to less impacting soil management allowing a more sustainable intensification of agriculture. The farmer sector included farmer organizations and companies responsible for supply of inputs and equipment suitable for seeding in no-till soil with permanent residue soil cover. Academia and research acted in the background at the strat but have now become more active. 

This interesting article from Japan looks at a solar powered mower integrated into a NT system that reduces GHG emissions. This study evaluates NT and intercropping with solar-powered machinery in organic cherry tomato production. They compared two tillage methods (NT} and rotary tillage (RT)] and two cropping patterns [cherry tomato/peanut intercropping (TP) and monocropping (M)]. Solar-powered robotic mowers replaced conventional mowers in NT to enhance environmental benefits. They assessed the results by crop yield, energy efficiency, carbon footprint, and profitability. They conclude that "NT-TP's potential to enhance yield, energy efficiency, and profitability while reducing the carbon footprint, makes it a sustainable management system for organic farming. 

This study from Poland looked at various tillage methods and their impact on soybean yield and quality. The four tillage methods were: a) Plowed tillage plus conventional row seeding (PCR); b) Plowed tillage plus strip till planting (PSD); c) No plough tillage + strip drill planting (NSD); and d) No-tillage + strip drill (ZSD). The paper presents the data on these 4 treatments. ZSD enhanced protein levels and stabilized protein and fat yields. They conclude that future studies should explore how tillage practices affect soil health, economic sustainability, and yield stability over time, especially under changing climatic conditions.

The authors mention that there are 3.5mha of CA in India but little data on the effects of CA on soil nutrient dynamics like N, P, and S. They have a nine year study on these nutrients in a maize-wheat cropping pattern that compares CA with conventional methods. Results show that CA and N addition significantly enhanced various soil chemical properties and microbial biomass compared to CM for N, P and S and concluded that "These findings contribute crucial knowledge for sustainable development by offering valuable perspectives on N, P and S management strategies."

This paper evaluates the role of increasing soil C levels with an expectation of mitigating and adapting to climate change needs. They contend that reduced soil disturbance, retention of crop residues, planting cover crops, or diversification of crop rotations with perennials are indeed effective, especially in the long term (>10 years), in improving soil properties that enhance climate change adaptation, but not so much climate change mitigation. They question whether current programs that pay for C stored in soil are sufficient to incentivize farmers to change their operations due to the high cost to test soil C to validate their efforts. Instead they propose that to promote wider adoption of sustainable conservation agricultural practices, and to make large-scale positive impacts through their use, farmers should be paid to “do the right thing”. The right thing is using the three principles of CA!

This review article looks at the relationship between agroecology and water management in order to identify strategies for sustainable agriculture in North African countries. The paper looks at agroecological approaches to water management, including agroforestry, conservation agriculture, water-efficient irrigation, and landscape design. It looks at integrating biodiversity for water regulation, leveraging ecosystem services for purification, and adopting advanced technologies, such as precision agriculture and remote sensing, and policies needed for efficient water management. They conclude that there is a need for interdisciplinary collaboration among agronomists, hydrologists, ecologists, policymakers, and local communities to develop holistic approaches that seamlessly integrate agroecology and modern water management, ensuring sustainable agricultural systems in the region. 

This is a paper from Uzbekistan on wheat where agriculture is 25% of the national GDP. The study looks at ways to close the yield gap in wheat. They used reviews, crop modeling and machine learning to identify ways to improve wheat yields. The simulations optimized seeding dates, nitrogen fertilizer rates, cultivar selection, and water management practices as ways to be self sufficient in wheat by increasing yields from 4.55 to 6.62 t/ha. Conservation agriculture also showed a 26 % increase in yields compared to conventional tillage. Other results showed that high-yielding, stress-tolerant wheat varieties released after 2010 increased wheat productivity, seeding between September 15 and October 15 maximized yields, while delayed sowing reduced yield by up to 57 kg ha−1 day−1. Seed rates of 160–180 kg ha−1 also helped reduce the yield gap. They concluded that these findings hold relevance for wheat production in other arid and semi-arid regions facing similar food security.

This paper from India evaluated contrasting tillage and residue management in the rice wheat systems of the Indo-Gangetic Plains to identify sustainable and energy efficient systems. Treatments include various triple cropping patters that include a legume, but also no-till wheat and rice that were compared with conventional  puddled rice and tillage wheat. NT systems had significantly lower operational energy for irrigation (∼40%), sowing (∼26%), and land preparation (100%) compared to a conventional-tillage (CT) system and also resulted in higher system yields, net energy returns, energy ratios, energy productivity and energy intensity. The authors conclude that the conventional system should be replaced with these more efficient and higher yielding NT + legume systems. 

This study from NW India using on-farm research explored how different duration's of CA (2, 4, 8, and 12 years) compared to conventional tillage (CT) on SOC, soil aggregation, and system productivity. Results showed that adopting 8-12 years of CA led significant increases in SOC in the topsoil (5cm) and 5-15cmand improved percentages of macroaggregates. But 8-12 years of CA resulted in20-25% reduction in soil inorganic carbon compared to CT. They conclude that enhancing SOC with long-term CA can improve climate-resilient wheat yields in NW India

This paper looks at wheat production in subtropical systems where terminal heat, lodging and erratic rain are common climate induced stresses. The data is collected from 8 locations in India. There were two tillage treatments; CT and NT and permanent raised beds (PRB). They had early and timely planting dates and 3 wheat varieties. Results show that NT and PRB significantly reduced lodging and increased grain yields compared to CT. Early sowing (early November) and the use of lodging-resilient varieties reduced crop lodging, improved crop performance, and increased wheat grain yield compared to late sowing (late November) and the lodging susceptible variety.

This paper utilized bibliometric analyses to map the conceptual and intellectual structure of soil health research from 1996-2021. They reviewed 984 peer reviewed papers that they divided into 3 major research clusters. The analysis revealed critical gaps, including limited integration of pedological modeling to quantify ecosystem services and insufficient long-term studies on conservation agriculture. They recommend that interdisciplinary collaboration among agronomists, microbiologists, policymakers, and climate scientists to align soil health metrics with global targets providing a roadmap to integrate soil health into climate-smart land-use policies.

This research from Brazil studied the SOC stocks to 1-meter deepth for 3 land uses; native vegetation (NV), no-till system (NTS) and plough based tillage (PBT) from 63 sites collecting 3402 soil samples from the Atlantic Forest biomes and Cerrado of Brazil. There was a significant loss of SOC stocks from the PBT compared to the NV treatment.  The SOC stocks of 16 NTS sites exhibited levels that exceeded those under NV, and SOC stock was restored from 80 to 100 % of its NV levels in 27 other NTS sites across the Brazilian biomes. The duration of NTS to restore SOC stock to that under NV ranged from 36.4 to 55.0 years for the Cerrado and Atlantic Forest biomes, respectively. 

This paper starts by saying conventional agriculture is labor, energy and water inefficient and so reports of experiments to identify more sustainable, productive and efficient crop production in a maize-wheat-mungbean system started in 2009-10 and assessed in 2018-19 to 2019-20. Treatments included CA-based bed planting methods such as permanent narrow, broad and flat beds with and without retention of crops residues and 75% and 100% of the recommended dose of nitrogen (N) were compared with conventional tillage (CT) treatment. Results show that adopting the CA practice involving a permanent broad bed with residue using 100% N in this maize-wheat-greengram system was more productive and efficient for nutrients, water, and energy.

This paper looks at how nature manages resources and describe living soil and its productivity using nature's laws to improve soil management. They promote the three principles of CA to achieve improved living soils since conventional soil tillage and poor crop diversity are resulting in soil degradation and loss of productivity. Mechanical tillage is not found in natural ecosystems whereas CA emulates natural systems leading to reversal of soil degradation, improved soil health that leads to improved yields and economic and environmental benefits to all farmer land sizes. The CA nature based systems are recommended to offset the issues of climate change and tillage induced soil degradation to help with future food security. 

Crop residue is crucial in CA management to improve soil health and increase yields. This paper from India looks at a residue cleaning system (T1) to help overcome the challenges of residues left after combine harvesting and included design, development and field testing. They first tested the equipment in a soil bin before testing in a field trial consisting of a wheat-greengram-maize cropping pattern and comparing with the Happy Seeder (T2) (an earlier equipment used for sowing into crop residue). T1 and T2 had similar yields but T1 required less energy although it slightly higher carbon emissions. They concluded that T1 had lower B/C ratio compared to T2 but increasing the number of rows in the T1 treatment could enhance field capacity, potentially reducing carbon emissions and improving economic returns.

This study analyses and compares the economic indicators of conservation reduced tillage (CT) widely practiced in Central Europe with those of conventional ploughing tillage (PT) assessing the effects of CT compared to PT on yields and profitability from 2004-2023. The study covered 83 ha in 10 paired plots (from year 13 onwards, 76 ha in 9 paired plots), including extreme weather conditions and 6 crops. During the transitional period, profit under CT decreased by an average of 11.9% compared with PT, but subsequent periods indicated positive results, 2.3% increase in gross income and 13% higher profit. Over 20 years, material costs for CT plots were 1.9% higher and operating costs were 9.8% lower compared with PT. Their results suggest shifting to reduced tillage is worth it. It would be interesting to have seen the profits if the CA system was used in this comparison. 

This paper looks at the impact of CA in an Ethiopian district on crop productivity using cross-sectional household data from 322 subjects in two agro-ecological zones. There were 168 CA and 154 non-CA farmers. The project's findings highlighted the need for policies that support and enable a more frequent and successfully established communication link between farmers with agricultural experts at the regional, zonal, and district levels, as well as agricultural extension personnel at the local level. There is a need to adopt crop and soil management systems on farmland,that results in improved soil quality consistently for improved crop productivity.

This study looked at the components of CA individually and in combinations with a control on soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics for a direct rice seeded-green gram system. Reduced tillage alone and in combination with rotation resulted in 10% and 6% lower CO2-C release than the plots with residue retained. The paper has results on the role of rotation and crop residue on various enzymes. They conclude that rotation and residue retention are effective for better C and N cycling in this system. Tillage on the other hand needs a longer time to show beneficial results than the 4 years of this study. The increase in soil enzyme activities improved microbial activity, which can further enhance nutrient availability for plants. and help improve soil health.

Excessive tillage of soils in semi-arid Mexico has resulted in severe soil degradation, physical and chemical. The aim of this research was to evaluate how CA can reverse this issue over the long term (25 years) in a maize-triticale rotation under irrigation comparing conventional tillage against CA. They measured various soil physical properties and grain and forage yields. In 18 of the 19 soil quality indicators were higher for CA compared to CT. The highest estimated sustainability was 85% for CA, compared to 59% for CT. CA had greater structural stability with higher porosity values and lower bulk density, important factors for soil structure and crop yields.

This interesting paper from Science promotes the future use of Drones and the paper says that uses of drones in agriculture has taken off globally in the past 5 years. This rapid change has been largely unnoticed by researchers outside of the specialized technical worlds of aeronautical engineering and precision agriculture. This paper explores the diffusion and implications of drones for agriculture amd implications for sustainability. It also proposes an agenda for future agricultural science and policy.

This paper from Bihar, Eastern India, looks at raised bed planting (RBP) for smallholder maize farmers. They evaluated this management system for 4 rabi (winter) seasons and compared with conventional flat planting (FP). They looked at yield, profitability, water use efficiency (WUE), and nutrient use efficiency (NUE). Maize yields were much higher under RBP than FP but also more profitable with higher net returns, better WUE and NUE. Farmers need to be motivated to adopt this system for Rabi maize. 

This paper reports on the long-term effects of different tillage practices and crop residue management on soil biological and physical health using winter wheat and a fodder radish cover crop. The experiment started in 2003 and samples taken in 2021. There were three tillage treatments: direct sowing (NT), harrowing to 10 cm H), and moldboard plowing to 20 cm (MP). Residue was either removed or left in the plots. The biological soil measures were two fatty-acid biomarkers arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF)and glomalin-related soil protein (EE). Soil physical indices were water stable aggregates (WSA) and five soil pore characters and SOC. CA practices increased AMF biomass and harrowing and NT resulted in stratified SOC. Residue increased SOC levels. They conclude that their study identified the significant role of AMF in maintaining soil health.

This paper from Poland was based on a long-term experiment started in 1999 and evaluated in 2016-2019. The crop studied was faba bean and looked 4 tillage systems; conventional (CT), reduced (RT), strip (ST) and no-till (NT). Over the 4 years there were two favorable years and two with prolonged drought with the weather conditions affecting faba bean yields more than tillage.The highest faba bean seed yield was obtained in 2017 when they ranged from 6.73 t ha−1 in NT to 7.64 t ha−1 after ST and they conclude that NT and ST are the most sustainable. NT provides the best soil protection and
conservation, but in favorable weather conditions, it limits the yield level of faba beans.

This study from Brazil looked at the effect on conservation tillage in a subtropical area of China in order to evaluate its suitability for maize in such areas. There were 3 tillage treatments; no-tillage (NT), earthworm bio-tillage (EBT), and traditional rotary tillage (RT). Also 3 residue treatments; none (O), straw (S), and composted cow manure (M). Maize yield and soil samples (0–10 cm) were collected after four growing seasons to determine the maize production, soil properties and microbial communities. Both no-tillage and earthworm bio-tillage increased soil pH, organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus contents, especially with cow manure additions, and increased the general bacteria and gram-positive bacteria under none input. No-tillage significantly increased microbial biomass carbon, especially with none and straw inputs.